Brookline This Summer: New Openings, Thursday Rituals, and a Coolidge Corner in Motion
The Thursday afternoon walk from Harvard Street to the Centre Street West lot looks a little different this year. There are two new coffee counters within a few blocks of each other, a Colombian steakhouse taking over a decade-old French address in Washington Square, and a food-hall concept from the parent company of Grubhub prepping a storefront next to Congregation Kehillath Israel. If you have lived in Brookline for a while, the map you carry in your head is quietly being redrawn.
For a town that reads as settled, Brookline is having an unusually active summer at street level. The activity is not evenly distributed. It is clustering in three walkable pockets, Coolidge Corner, Washington Square, and Cleveland Circle, and each pocket is picking up a different kind of anchor. Read together, the openings say something about where the neighborhood's daily routine is headed, and where the farmers market, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, and Brookline Booksmith remain the fixed points around which the newer arrivals orbit.
Coolidge Corner is where the summer's most visible changes are. A Texas-based Yemeni café chain, Arwa Coffee, debuted at 1333 Beacon Street in early March, joining an already dense stretch of cafés and adding a category the block did not have. A few doors in either direction and you are back at the anchors that have made the intersection what it is: the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline Booksmith, and the Thursday farmers market behind the theatre.
The market itself is the summer's most reliable ritual. The Brookline Farmers Market runs every Thursday from 1:30 to 6:30 PM, from the first Thursday in June until the last Thursday before Thanksgiving, at the Centre Street West Parking Lot in Coolidge Corner, behind the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The C branch of the Green Line drops you at the Coolidge Corner stop, and the 66 bus stops at Harvard Street at Beacon Street.
The vendor list is worth reading before you go. Regulars include Kimball Fruit Farm, Stillman's Farm, Langwater Farm, Clear Flour Bread, Stillman Quality Meats, Boston Smoked Fish, The Fish Lady, Mei Mei Dumplings, SamosaMan, and Solstice Pasta & Provisions. If you have ever wondered who the fish counter is, that would be Cyndi, whose case typically carries striped bass in season, halibut, bluefin tuna, swordfish, bluefish, and scallops. Bring a cooler bag if you plan to browse Booksmith after.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre is programming beyond first-run this summer. On July 9 the Public Library of Brookline is partnering with the Coolidge on a free screening of Moonlight (2016) in Movie House 5 at 290 Harvard Street, closing out the library's Pride programming. Space is limited and registration is required, so it is worth checking the library's calendar the morning of.
For families juggling teens and grandparents in the same house this summer, the library is also running Creative Connections, an intergenerational summer arts program on Mondays and Wednesdays from July 6 through August 12, 10:00 AM to noon, built around storytelling, photography, textile, and floral art workshops. It is the kind of programming that flies under the radar unless someone tells you it exists.
If Coolidge Corner is layering on top of what is already there, Washington Square is turning over. Capricho Colombian Steakhouse is taking the 1627 Beacon Street space that housed La Voile for a decade until its lease ended in April, and plans a fine-dining format with occasional live music, according to manager Vanessa Ynes Dorta Lopez. A Colombian steakhouse in the heart of Washington Square is a genuine departure for the block, and it is worth noting for anyone who used to build a Friday night around La Voile's steak frites.
Two other openings on the same panel change the daily rhythm rather than the destination dining scene. Brookline Lunch, a second location of the popular diner named for its original address on Brookline Street in Cambridge, will open in the former Busy Bee space at 1046 Beacon Street and has said it will keep the Busy Bee name. For anyone who has lived here long enough to have mourned the original, that is meaningful. And two "Jimmy Dunks" hybrids are coming to Brookline, with Jimmy John's operating inside a Dunkin' at 1020 Commonwealth Avenue and another inside the Dunkin' at 1316 Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner, serving sandwiches alongside the usual Dunkin' menu.
The most-discussed opening of the summer is not open yet. Wonder, the multi-restaurant food hall concept, is targeting August 2026 at 392 Harvard Street, promising 15-plus restaurants under one roof with dine-in, takeout, and delivery. The company, whose parent also owns Grubhub, has been building physical locations across the Northeast, and in Brookline it is moving into the vacant storefront next door to Congregation Kehillath Israel. Regional roll-out has Natick, Belmont, and Framingham debuting in February 2026, followed by Acton, Canton, Medford, Burlington, Newton, and Watertown in March.
Here is the useful piece of context if you have only read the headline. Wonder positions itself somewhere between a food hall and a ghost kitchen, most locations are designed as full brick-and-mortar spaces, and the Brookline outpost will follow that model with dine-in seating, takeout, and delivery. Whether the format lands in a walkable town where residents already have a dozen sit-down options within five minutes of Harvard Street is a fair question, and one local commentary has raised, with residents on Reddit worrying that tech-driven ghost-kitchen models could dampen community interaction and add delivery-driver traffic. Worth watching, not worth pre-judging.
The Chestnut Hill Avenue side of Brookline picked up its own opening earlier in the year. Norinori Test Kitchen is open at 399 Chestnut Hill Avenue in the Cleveland Circle area, from the NoToro Hospitality Group behind Matsunori Handroll Bar and Mai, serving handrolls and bento boxes. If your regular loop keeps you east of Washington Square, it is a reason to reroute a summer weeknight dinner. The stretch has been thin on modern Japanese, and this fills it without needing to cross into Brighton.
A few dates worth pinning to the fridge before the summer runs out.
Take a step back and look at where the year's openings are landing. The Yemeni café slots into the densest café stretch in town. The Colombian steakhouse takes a former French tenant's lease in Washington Square. A Cambridge diner keeps a beloved Brookline name alive at the old Busy Bee address. A tech-forward food hall moves next to a synagogue on Harvard Street. And a handroll test kitchen finally gives Cleveland Circle something in its own weight class.
The pattern is not consolidation and it is not disruption. It is the neighborhood's commercial fabric getting more varied, block by block, while the anchors that make Brookline feel like Brookline — the Thursday market, the Coolidge, Booksmith, the C line — stay exactly where they are. That is the specific texture of this summer if you already live here: familiar routes, new stops along the way.
If you are curious how these shifts read against home values on your particular street, or you are simply thinking about a move within Brookline in the fall, the Batya & Alex Team is happy to talk through what is trading, where, and why. Start Your Home Search with a conversation that begins with your block, not a portal search.
Our team will elevate your real estate experience, ensuring sellers shine and buyers win in Greater Boston's competitive market. Our dedication goes beyond deals—we're about making dreams a reality, building lasting bonds, and turning complex market challenges into rewarding outcomes for every client.